


Chapter and Verse

by Princip1914



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst and Humor, Bottom Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is the little spoon, Dowling Era, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Light Dom/sub, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Rough Sex, Sex Club, Top Crowley (Good Omens), Undernegotiated Kink, biblically infused D/s, grievous misuse of bible verses, oneshot brought to you by repressed longing and the King James Bible, slightly healthier aftercare, wednesdays are the worst, working out six thousand years of trauma through a six minute quickie in the club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:31:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22593145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princip1914/pseuds/Princip1914
Summary: Crowley was edging towards the door and beginning to feel a rush of relief that they could just put this awkward encounter behind them and hopefullynever talk of it againwhen all of a sudden, Aziraphale said, “hey, wait a minute, is that myhalo?”A role reversal/role play bit of nonsense sparked by a stray comment on the GO RomCom discord server. Alternative titles for this fic include “to be known, biblically” and “hump day.” You have been warned.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 65
Kudos: 222





	Chapter and Verse

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank everyone on the GO RomCom Discord server who had to put up with my panicked chats about footnote formatting. Consider this your well deserved reward. 
> 
> CW: Rough sex, poorly negotiated kink

Crowley didn’t usually do this. Well, at least he didn’t usually do this on a _Wednesday_. But, it had been a hell of a week and it wasn’t even half over yet. [1] Aziraphale was in a snit over the flower arrangements Harriet had asked for for Warlock’s third birthday party. [2] Warlock was still teething and drooling all over everything, and then just this morning, at said party, had pissed on Crowley’s Louis Vuttons in front half the diplomats in the UK, so that Crowley couldn’t even use a miracle to clean them up. The garbage disposal in Crowlely’s flat had been broken beyond even what demonic miracles could fix ever since an incident with a particularly stubborn ficus last month.[3] What was a demon with limited coping skills to do but revert to their only other outlet, even if it was a day early.

Crowley slipped inside the unmarked door of the club. It was the kind of club that Crowley liked to take credit for, although truth be told, he had only discovered very recently. If pressed, Crowley would have bragged that his activities at said club were of the most depraved and sinful nature. If pressed even more, as he was now, by a young man in very little clothing with a speculative look in his eye, Crowley would have squeaked out, “er...um...no thanks, really just into watching tonight, maybe another night, we could, yeah, not that...you know...anything wrong with these sorts of, yeah, just...you do you.” Crowley waved a hand vaguely as the man wandered back into the crowd with a disappointed shrug. 

Truth be told, Crowley didn’t even really like to watch. But he liked to come and be watched. Honestly, really, he just liked the clothes.[4] He hadn’t meant for it to become A Thing, but it sort of did all on its own. He put it down to the stress of childrearing and the oncoming Apocalypse. Thursdays had always made sense for The Thing because Crowley usually reported to Hell on Thursday mornings and he was always twitchy afterwards. But there was no reason it couldn’t be A Thing on Wednesday as well.

Crowley shouldered his way through the crowd to the bar to get a drink. They didn’t serve anything alcoholic here on play nights, but that didn’t matter. Crowley could turn grape juice into a smooth red any day of the week. He strode towards the bar and promptly collided head on with another person who was just turning away, drink in hand.

“Watch it,” Crowley hissed, picking himself up from the floor and surreptitiously miracling juice out of white wool and leather. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” dithered a voice that Crowley would recognize anywhere. Crowley nearly fell back down in shock.

“Aziraphale, what are you doing here?” Crowley gasped.

“What are you doing here?” Aziraphale retorted with what Crowley felt was absolutely uncalled for affront.

“‘M a demon,” Crowley said. “I’m...you know...tempting. Good place for it.”

They both looked around and Crowley immediately regretted it. The room was bathed in red light and a low steady beat thrummed from the speakers. To their right, a man in a ball gag, collar, and nothing else was crawling on his hands and knees as a woman in high heels tugged on his leash. To their left, another woman who was perched atop what looked like a cross between a mechanical bull and a bull sized dildo came to a noisy climax. Two men were whipping a third who was tied to a Saint Andrew's Cross propped against the wall. All around, other acts, in various states of completion and indecency, were occuring. Crowley hastily looked back towards the floor. So did Aziraphale.

“Er,” Crowley said, “what are you doing then?”

“Blessing,” Aziraphale said hastily. “We’re in a den of sin and vice. Needs blessings. Lots of blessings. Keeping things, holy and all that. Very holy.”

Unbidden, both Crowley and Aziraphale’s eyes darted towards the men’s bathroom where there was absolutely a hole, although not one that had been divinely inspired. [5] If Crowley had been paying more attention, he might have wondered how Aziraphale knew the layout of the club so well. As it was, he was too busy wishing the floor would swallow him whole.

“Well, er…” Crowley said, attempting to move past Aziraphale without taking his eyes off the floor. “I’ll just...leave you to it then, yeah?”

Crowley was edging towards the door and beginning to feel a rush of relief that they could just put this awkward encounter behind them and hopefully _never talk of it again_ when all of a sudden, Aziraphale said, “hey, wait a minute, is that my _halo_?”

Crowley stopped in his tracks and a guilty expression crossed his face before he could talk some sense into his features. “What halo?”

“It absolutely is!” Azirahale said, peevish and persistent in that way of his which was incredibly endearing when directed towards other people and incredibly frustrating when directed towards Crowley. “It’s definitely regimental issue.”

“You weren’t using it,” Crowley stubbed his toe on the sticky floor. “Found it in your closet at the bookshop when I was looking for wine, just borrowed it for a sec, alright?”

“You’ll tarnish it, Crowley!” Aziraphale exclaimed. “What am I to do if the rapture comes and it’s not polished?”

“Not like you were polishing it when it was in your closet,” Crowley muttered. “And I thought we were trying to prevent the rapture if it’s all the same to you!”

Aziraphale wasn’t listening. “Wait...” he said slowly, eyes traveling down Crowley’s body and growing huge.

But at the same time, Crowley had finally screwed his courage to the sticking place and looked up at Aziraphale’s outfit. His mouth fell open. “Aziraphale,” he said. “Is that my pitchfork?”

Aziraphale tried and failed to hide the offending item behind his back. “No?” he hazarded. [6]

“I haven’t seen that in ages,” Crowley said, the club around them momentarily, mercifully, forgotten. “Where’d you find it?”

“Oh, it was in that pocket dimension you accidentally made in the space time continuum in 1834,” Aziraphale said snappishly. “I know sometimes you hide pastries in there and I was getting peckish. Just picked it up on my way out. But that’s not the point, Crowley. The point is, why are you dressed like that?”

“Perfectly normal way to be dressed,” Crowley muttered, knowing it wasn’t.

“No it’s not,” Aziraphale said, eyes traveling up Crowley’s body again. “You’re wearing a white kilt, a kilt, which is _far_ shorter than regulation size mind you, and the wrong kind of tartan, and you’ve got little white lace wings stuck to your back, and a halo on, _my_ halo on in fact...Crowley are you...dressed as an angel?”

“Er, a very bad one?” Crowley squeaked.

Azirahphale opened and then closed his mouth several times. As he did so, Crowley tried and failed to wrap his mind around Aziraphale’s outfit. Gone was the Brother Francis smock and sideburns and in its place was a snakeskin...garment that framed Azirahaphale’s chest like a corset. The garment did not reach past Aziraphale’s knees. It left exposed more bare skin than Aziraphale had shown in quite possibly a thousand years. Crowley felt a bit faint and hot under the collar, which was ridiculous, because he wasn’t even _wearing_ a collar tonight, but now that was a thought, wasn’t it, Aziraphale, dressed like that, hooking a finger around Crowley’s collar, tugging him to his knees. Or even better, Aziraphale in a snakeskin collar to match his outfit, a collar patterned after Crowley’s own skin, begging Crowley to save him as he always did, at the Bastille, 1945, countless times and countless places over the ages, and Crowley would say, no. No you spawn of Satan, you’re on your own this time, if you want my help you’ll have to earn it, and you’ll probably even like earning it, you depraved creature, you foul fiend--

The clinging material stretched tight over Aziraphale’s waist and his round thighs, dipping between them to reveal that Aziraphale, creature of habit that he was, had not changed the kind of effort he was making since that time in Ancient Rome when a toga slip had given Crowley something to think about for centuries.[7] Crowley gulped.

“Lets...go get some air,” Aziraphale said eventually.

“Ngk,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale walked in front of him and Crowley meekly trailed behind. The...outfit had what looked like a long leather tail attached to it, although when Crowley peered closer, it actually appeared that the skirt portion had a hole cut in it and...oh. Crowley thought he might need to sit down. He dropped his eyes to the floor, which seemed to be the only safe place to look, and followed the click click of Aziraphale’s heels to a secluded space in the corner. Numbly, he realized that Aziraphale was wearing Crowley’s own Louis Vutton red bottoms, miraculously devoid of antichrist piss.

“So,” Aziraphale said, when they were out of the way of traffic, onlookers, and distracting sounds, sights, and smells.

“So,” Crowley echoed, raising his eyes to Aziraphale’s face again.

There was an awkward silence.

“Why’re you wearing my shoes?” Crowley blurted. “Why’re you carrying around my ceremonial pitchfork.”

“It, er, makes the whole blessing thing easier,” Aziraphale said, looking at his nails. “I’m, um, dressed as a demon to make the humans confront their sins. That’s exactly it. I’m helping them drive the devil out.” He nodded vigorously. Crowley had a brief, but very graphic, vision of how one might go about driving the devil out.[8] He closed his eyes tight and groaned through his teeth.

“How about you,” Aziraphale asked. “The...angel thing?”

“Just A Thing, really,” Crowley said, cracking one eye open and chancing a glance at Aziraphale who was still far too naked.

“Right,” Aziraphale said slowly, with the clear inflection of a celestial being who was Not Going to Go There. “Well, I’m sorry this is so awkward, but could I ask you to leave, go find a different club? This one’s taken I’m afraid.”

Crowley’s eyes snapped open in affront. “Taken?” he said, “angel, I’ve been coming here every Thursday night for three years. _You_ can find a new club. This one is mine.”

“Yours?” Azirahale said, scandalized, “my dear boy, I’ve been coming here most Wednesdays since 1883. You have no right whatsoever!”

Crowley’s mouth dropped open. “_1883_?” he hissed, “but wait, that means…were you out here blessing people while I was asleep?”

“Er,” Aziraphale looked away. “In a manner of speaking.”

“That’s just not on,” Crowley said. “What about The Arrangement?”

“Oh, fine,” Aziraphale snapped. “These little outings have always been, well, rather extracurricular. No formal blessings to speak of. Happy now?”

Crowley digested this. “So you mean,” he said slowly, “all this time, you’ve been carrying on like this, lugging around my pitchfork, wearing…” Crowley looked down at the garment and promptly had to look away again. “Dressing like...like...like…” words failed him again. “All for _extracurricular activities_?”

“The outfit and pitchfork is a...relatively new development,” Aziraphale said with all the haughty dignity he could muster.[9]

“So, um, just so I’m clear,” Crowley said, mouth dry, heart pounding in his chest. “What kind of _extracurricular activities_ are we talking about here?”

“Oh, Crowley come on!” Aziraphale snapped, the tips of his ears turning a red so bright it was visible even in the low light of the club. “Exactly the kind of extracurricular activities you would expect. You’ve been coming here for three years, I don’t have to describe it to you. Honestly.”

“Er,” Crowley said, into the awkward silence that followed. “So if you’re not going to leave, and I’m not going to leave, what are we going to do?”

“You can do whatever you usually do,” Aziraphale said waspishly. “I’m not stopping you.”

“I er...just watch mostly. I don’t really. Do. Anything.”

“Don’t you want to?” Aziraphale asked, and then clapped a hand over his mouth as if he could take it back. “Never mind.”

The silence had become, if possible, even more awkward.

“What do you get out of it?” Aziraphale said suddenly. “The watching? The dressing like--” Aziraphale’s eyes flicked to Crowley again, ran up and down his form like the edge of a blade. “---me?” Aziraphale finished, driving the point home somewhere under Crowley’s ribs.

“I…” Crowley shivered. “I dunno. Nice sometimes. Feeling all righteous.”

Azirahale swallowed. “Crowley do you wish, is it that, do you regret--?” Aziraphale’s eyes filled with pity. It made something sick and heavy form in the pit of Crowley’s stomach.

“Nah,” Crowley said, working his jaw, trying to get the taste of that heavy thing out of his throat. “It’s not about that.”

“Then what is it about?” Aziraphale asked.

“What do you get out of pretending to be a demon then?” Crowley asked, suddenly, rounding on Aziraphale. “I could ask you the same question, couldn’t I? Is it that you get a sick little thrill playacting your worst nightmare, pretending you’re a fallen, lowly, savage, cruel,” Crowley leaned in close as murmured the words. His higher nervous centers were sending danger signals to the rest of his corporation, which ignored them utterly in favor of leaning in even closer. “...creature just like me,” Crowley finished, nose to nose with Aziraphale.

“You’re not,” Aziraphale said softly, straight to Crowley’s lips.

“Not what?” Crowley’s mouth asked without his permission.

“Lowly, savage, cruel,” Aziraphale breathed back.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Crowley’s mouth said, which was not at all what Crowley had been planning to say. “And you’re going to like it,” his mouth continued.

Aziraphale’s lips opened a fraction and he let out a little gasp. Crowley darted a glance at the scant space between their bodies and saw that the fabric over Aziraphale’s crotch had grown noticeably tighter. He licked his lips.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, “please, angel.”

Crowley let out a noise that was literally inhuman and drove their mouths together. It was sloppy, wet, and vicious. Their teeth clacked. Aziraphale staggered backwards, unsteady in his borrowed heels and Crowley took advantage of it, pushed Aziraphale’s greater bulk back against the wall and pinned him there, hips to hips. They were both trembling. They were both very hard. Crowley reached around and tugged experimentally at the tail. Aziraphale moaned against him and shifted his hips into Crowley’s.

Crowley pulled back, lips and chin wet from the violence of their kiss. “Ask and it shall be given to you,” he said in a voice he barely recognized as his own. Aziraphale’s body rippled against his.

“Angel,” Aziraphale said into Crowley’s neck, “will you not smite me?”

“Does not mercy triumph over judgement?” Crowley asked, even as his hand crept to the back of Aziraphale’s neck and his long nails dug in, belying the woods.

Aziraphale gasped, high and soft in the back of his throat, leaned back against the scrape of Crowley’s nails. With a thought, Crowley turned them into claws and pushed in harder, feeling the give of Aziraphale’s skin beneath their sharpness. Aziraphale let out a long, low moan. “I am as a roaring lion,” Aziraphale said, shuddering. “I walk about seeking whom I may devour.”

“Then seek no further,” Crowley said, and with the hand on the back of Aziraphale’s neck, pushed him to his knees.

Aziraphale’s mouth, a wide red O, ghosted soft and hot over the tented fabric of Crowley’s kilt. The sight alone was almost too much. Crowley spread his legs, braced one hand on the wall, and leaned forwards until his thighs bracketed Aziraphale’s shoulders, and his knees were pushing them back, pinning Aziraphale in place against the wall. And then he froze. Aziraphale’s eyes looked up at him, blue, round, patiently waiting. Those familiar eyes that he had known for six thousand years. He was barely fit to crawl at Aziraphale’s feet, not fit for this, for standing above him. Aziraphale ought not to be below him, on the dirty, sticky floor. It was wrong, it was Crowley who ought to be there, begging to be let into Aziraphale’s life, promising he could slow down, wait, do whatever was needed, just don’t cast me out, please--

Crowley couldn’t do this to Aziraphale, he couldn’t use him like this, as if it was something Aziraphale deserved, as if Aziraphale had done anything wrong...and yet even as he thought about it, Crolwley recalled of all the times Aziraphale had denied him, had needed Crowley for something or other, and then discarded him just as quickly when the depth of his feeling became inconvenient. Crolwey’s cock twitched unbidden against the fabric of the kilt.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said low and urgent. Aziraphale’s eyes met his in the gloom. “Aziraphale, I can’t---”

“Did not the lord give you a flaming sword,” Aziraphale interrupted him, infuriatingly calm.

“What,” Crowley gasped.

“Haven’t lost it, have you?” Azirahphale asked and there was a trace of mirth in his tone, an inside joke to let him know it was alright. This was Aziraphale giving him permission, Aziraphale wanting this from Crowley somehow, however improbably. And the one thing Crowley was good at was doing what Aziraphale wanted.

“What kind of a demon are you,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale was kind enough not to comment on the rough wonder in his voice, “to ask after the flaming sword of an angel?”

“A very wicked one indeed,” Aziraphale dropped his eyes to the indecent bulge lifting the fabric of Crowley’s kilt. Azirahphale’s tongue darted out to touch his lips, a red, obscene flicker. Crowley groaned.

“Foul fiend,” he hissed, “you were cast out, you do not deserve even to lick my boots, you do not deserve--” Crowley’s voice caught and he swallowed, hard. “Prove to me that you deserve my sword.”

“Demon though I am,” Aziraphale said, softer now, smearing his open, wet mouth against the exposed skin of Crowley’s thigh, “my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”

“I…” Crowley passed the hand not braced against the wall through Aziraphale’s curls. They were as soft as he had imagined all these years. Aziraphale quoting psalms at him from his knees, the texture of his hair; Crowley knew these were things that would ruin him if he let them. It was the stuff of earthly love, and Crowley would only want more and more, would only be satisfied when he was able to kiss Aziraphale in the front seat of the Bentley, wrap his arms around him on the couch in the bookshop, hold his hand when they went to dinner at the Ritz. And that was not what Aziraphale was asking for. Aziraphale wanted something Divine, unyielding, not of this world but the next. Crowley could do that. Crowley could do that for him. Crowley took a deep breath, thought of God, hardening Pharaoh's heart before the plagues. He fisted his hand in Aziraphale’s hair. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” he said, twisting his hand and pulling. Aziraphale let out an indecent little whimper. “For they shall be satisfied.” Crowley released Aziraphale’s hair and raised the hem of his kilt. [10]

The heat and suction of Aziraphale’s mouth around his cock was something that not even Crowley’s many dreams to this effect could have adequately prepared him for. [11] Crowley couldn’t help himself. As Aziraphale began to suck in earnest, Crowley’s hips stuttered of their own accord, fucking into Aziraphale’s mouth.

Aziraphale pulled off. “Yes,” he said into the sharp angle of Crowley’s hip. “Please.”

Growling, Crowley did as he was bidden, sliding back into that wet, welcome heat.

“Open up your mouth,” he gasped, pressing in until his cock hit the back of Aziraphale’s throat, until Aziraphale’s head was pressed all the way back against the wall. “Co that it may cing my praicec, note to celf, get letter c back from Carah. Amen,” Crowley bit out. Aziraphale choked and spluttered around him, but Crowley didn’t let up, driving into him with even more force. The pleasure rose like a ferocious wave until all at once, it was too much.

“Up,” Crowley said, pulling back, and reaching a hand down. Aziraphale stumbled to his feet, did not resist at all when Crowley turned him to face the wall and and arranged him in quite a compromising position.

“Asssssk for what you want,” Crowley hissed.

Aziraphale’s voice was hoarse, but his answer was quick and clear. “You.”

“And how do you dessserve me,” Crowley ground out, then had to pause to take a breath and get his s’s under control. “Demon scum.”

“Take me, use me, thwart me, possess me,” Aziraphale wailed into the wall.

Crowley spread his thumbs speculatively into the small divots just above Aziraphale’s hips, visible through the clinging fabric. “Angels don’t possess foul creatures,” Crowley said. “Angels smite them.” He watched his own hand rise and fall hard against Aziraphale’s backside as if it belonged to someone else. Aziraphale leaned into it and moaned.

Crowley slapped Aziraphale again, then let his fingers roam, stuttering over where the leather tail emerged from Aziraphale’s body. “How stretched are you, for me?”

“Enough,” Aziraphale rocked back towards Crowley’s hand. Crowley tugged a bit and Aziraphale gasped. He tugged harder and the tail came free. It was indeed, quite an impressively large toy. [12]

“Please,” Aziraphale begged. “Please, angel, I need it.”

Crowley considered for a moment, thought about _absolutely not,_ and _we’re not friends_ and _too fast_. “No,” Crowley said, and slid the toy back in. Pressed against the wall, Aziraphale shuddered and began, very softly, to weep. Crowley leaned in close, chest against Aziraphale’s back, lips up against his ear. “Beg me,” he said. He tightened one hand into the flesh of Aziraphale’s thigh and closed the other, claws and all, around Aziraphale’s throat. “Tell me how righteous I am, adore me, plead with me, and I will see if I grant your request, loathsome beast of the pit.”

Aziraphale was gasping nonsensical things and thrusting his hips against the wall. “You’re so good to me,” Crowley made out. “Divine.” And, incongruously, something about crepes.

Crowley reared back and slapped Aziraphale again, even harder this time across his ample ass, straight across where the tail was emerging from his body. “Be still,” Crowley snarled. “And ask _nicely_.”

Aziraphale stilled. “Please,” he said thickly but distinctly. “Please give unto me your divine glory, fill up my cup so it runneth over, please, please--” but at the very first please, Crowley was already tearing the plug out, arranging himself behind Aziraphale, pushing in, rough and desperate.

Crowley was very, very close already. This was going to be over far too quickly. He considered using a miracle to hold out, but discarded the thought immediately. He was so far gone, in this state, he was liable to miracle half the blessed city into an erection lasting longer than four hours. Aziraphale was making high pitched keening noises, seemingly beyond human language, and these noises were going straight to Crowley’s hips, connecting a circuit that had nothing to do with his mind, and driving his body forward at a furious rate.

Crowley moved the hand from Aziraphale’s throat up to his hair. “You think you deserve this, he gasped out. “You think even a demon can feel love? Can want it? Can give it back?” Crowley panted into Aziraphale’s neck, hand clutched even tighter in his hair, fucking into his body as visciously as he could. Aziraphale took it all, pushed back against him for more. Tightness was building in the small of Crowley’s back. His hips stuttered “You think even a foul beast can love and be loved in return?” Crowely gasped out.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said simply, and Crowley came. It felt like it went on for a very long time. When it was done, Crowley stayed there, plastered to Aziraphale’s back, softening inside him, still trying to catch his breath.

“Can I?” Crowley asked eventually, snaking his hand around to the front of Aziraphale’s dress.

“Erm,” Aziraphale said, just as Crowley’s questing hand found a telltale patch of wetness. “No need.” He sounded equally winded.

“Wow,” Crowley said. “When?”

“When you said, when you asked if a foul beast could--”

“Ah” Crowley coughed. “Yeah.”

They stood in a comfortable, sated sort of silence, which by degrees, evaporated into an awkward, sticky silence. Crowley’s cock slipped out of Aziraphale’s body. Some of his spend trickled out after it. Watching, Crowley felt something clench deep in his gut that was hot and possessive and more than a little shameful. He couldn’t help but feel he had defiled Aziraphale somehow, and some part of him also couldn’t help but feel good about it. Crowley had to avert his eyes. “Should I clean us up…?” He raised his fingers, miming a snapping gesture.

“Oh, please, don’t.” Aziraphale said, covering Crowley’s hand with his own.

“Angel…” Crowley said uncertainly, looking at their joined hands.

“Tomorrow you can go back to being Nanny and I can go back to being Brother Francis and pretend this never happened but tonight, just let me have this, for a little while at least,” Aziraphale said a touch desperately.

“You could have it forever if you wanted,” Crowley couldn’t stop himself from saying.

A small, sad smile played around the corner of Aziraphale’s mouth. “Someday, I’m sure I will,” he said.

It was, Crowley reflected, not so different from “perhaps someday, we could go for a picnic,” and yet also, entirely different. His body thrummed with the noticeable absence of the conditional. 

Swiftly, before he could think to stop himself, Crowley brought their joined hands to his mouth and brushed a brief kiss over Azirahale’s knuckles. “Anytime,” he said, voice rough. “I mean it, angel.”

“I know, Crowley,” Aziraphale sounded sad again, and that wouldn’t do. Crowley leaned in and kissed him, ever so gently on the lips, the way he ought to have done earlier if he had been thinking straight.

“You’re alright though?” he asked when he pulled back. “All the...you know, divine smighting and foul beast stuff...we, er, didn’t really talk about it beforehand did we?”

“More than,” Azirahpale smiled at him, easier now. “More than alright. How about you? Are you alright?”

Crowley hesitated, curled his fingers tighter around Aziraphale’s. “I..” he said eventually, deciding to be honest. He always was, when it came to Aziraphale. “I will be.”

Aziraphale squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry if it was too much.”

“Don’t apologize.” Crowley shook his head. “Just. Let me, let me help clean you up, get your coat, come settle you in the gardener’s cottage--” Crowley’s voice broke.

“Of course,” Aziraphale said, “but,” his voice wavered a bit, “just for tonight my dear.”

Crowley nodded, because he didn’t trust himself to speak. He snapped his fingers and a cloth appeared in his hand. He reached between Aziraphale’s thighs with it gently, cleaning him the human way. Aziraphale let him.

Later, in the wide bed in the garden’s cottage, Crowley squirmed even deeper into Aziraphale’s embrace. [13] Behind him, the angel, a warm, solid weight, was snoozing gently for the first time in decades. But Crowley couldn’t sleep. For once, it was not the impending Apocalypse that kept him awake, nor was it Warlock’s cries on the baby monitor Harriet insisted he still have in his room even though he was three years old already for Satan’s sake. Instead, Crowley closed his eyes, and thought about the sure way Aziraphale had said “someday;” closed his eyes and dreamed.

### Footnotes

1. Of course, for Crowley, every week was a hell of a week, but in this case, it had been hellish in the normal, colloquial sense as well as in the eternal judgement of the damned sense↩

2. "What kind of three year old needs flower arrangements anyway?” Aziraphale had asked into his tumbler of very fine scotch. “The kind of three year old whose mom invites the supermodel wives of European ambassadors to their child’s birthday party,” Crowley said, topping up Aziraphale’s scotch. “Relax, angel, I’ll just shout at the bouquets until they behave anyway.”↩

3. That said incident was not the ficus’ fault, but rather had been instigated by Aziraphale looking at Crowley Like That over a slice of Angel Food cake at the British Museum was neither here nor there."↩

4. If Aziraphale ever told Crowley that Gabriel had expressed similar sentiments about his time on earth, Crowley would have swallowed his tongue, quite literally, then spent several hours coughing it back up again. Having an anatomical form somewhere on the scale from snake to human did wonders for one’s ability to take metaphors seriously. ↩

5. Despite this fact, God’s name was said, with some regularity, in its vicinity." ↩

6. Angels are, as a rule, terrible liars. Aziraphale had gotten better at it after six thousand years on earth, but he still struggled. His usual strategy of lying to himself as well as everyone else in order to be convincing had ceased to be effective, where Crowley was concerned, on a certain night in 1945.↩

7. Rather a lot of something to think about in fact.↩

8. It involved the misuse of a certain ceremonial pitchfork, a length of rope, one of the O rings bolted to the ceiling of the club, and a healthy disregard for the laws of physics.↩

9. This dignity was undercut a bit by the temporal connection between Aziraphale’s adoption of this new style of dress and the introduction of Nanny to the Dowling household. The connection between these two events was something Aziraphale refused to think about with the same ironclad obstinacy that he had used to successfully refuse to think about a number of things over the past six thousand years, including but not limited to: the flush on Crowley’s cheeks when he had been drinking, the entire concept of collarbones, Milton’s Paradise lost, the delicate scales on Crowley’s pinky toe, and three absinth and opium fueled days in 1797, which resulted in, among other things, the first draft of the poem Kubla Khan and Aziraphale miracling away his gag reflex for good.↩

10. One might wonder how it was that Crowley, who had, after all, been cast out of Heaven well before some major policy changes took effect, was able to quote the New Testament in such detail. The answer lay in Aziraphale’s collection of misprint bibles, which Crowley had been pleased to discover, did not scald his hands like other sorts of bibles (logically, he assumed that this feature was due to the misprints, not, as it actually was, to a 3am scolding by a particularly drunk and maudlin angel who impressed upon the books in graphic detail exactly what would happen to them if they hurt his demon companion, Word of God or no). Whether or not Crowley had spent the last fifty years furtively reading them while Aziraphle was bustling around in other parts of the shop was neither here nor there. As it was, Crowley was desperately hoping that the dialogue he was spewing was Standard Operating Procedure and not just Mostly Typo.↩

11.Many, many, dreams, only some of which occurred while he was sleeping, and quite a few of which were rather hands on.↩

12. If Crowley made a subtle adjustment to his own effort after seeing the size of the plug, well, who was counting anyway. (Dagon. Dagon was counting. Hell’s mental health benefits package did not even begin to cover the kind of therapy she needed after just the paperwork from tonight, let alone 6000 years of Crowley’s demonic interventions.)↩

13. It was, quite literally, heavenly.↩

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the filthiest thing I have ever written and I don’t know if I’m disgusted by myself or proud? I’m definitely proud of the footnotes though. 
> 
> [Come say hi on tumblr](https://princip1914.tumblr.com) if you want to scream more about Good Omens and/or The Good Place, my two current obsessions.


End file.
